Category: Anti-Gun Folks

It’s quite probable that not too many people would have ever heard of Lauer Custom Weaponry if it hadn’t been for Mayor Bloomberg, and now The Brady Campaign.  In the tradition of “There’s no such thing as bad publicity!”, there’s little doubt in my mind the notoriety they’ve gained through the pant shitting hysterics of leading anti-gun groups is bound to drive the sales of their product through the roof, and make even the grizzliest of grizzled gun guys long to paint their rifle pink.  Why?  Because there’s one thing The Brady’s and Mayor Bloomberg don’t understand; we gunnies hate people presuming to tell us what is and what isn’t acceptable when it comes to our private affairs, and we’ll go out of our way to patronize companies and products just to piss them off.  The more hysterics they cry, the more colorful guns will be out there.

I’m not going to run out to buy any of the Bloomberg Collection any time soon, because I’m a traditionalist, and I like my rifles like I like my coffee: black.  But make a serious effort to ban this stuff, I might just do up an AR in Barney Purple just as an act of defiance.  Yeah, because I’m like that.  Most of us are.  So go ahead, Brady.  Continue to vilify this stuff, and Lauer will be seeing $$ in their eyeballs for every nasty editorial.

But what of colored guns?  Are they really a threat to law enforcement?  As much as I’m trying to imagine that drug dealers and gang bangers are going to run around with a Bryco 9mm painted in Barney Purple, I’m having a difficult time.  Besides, colored gun are not anything new.  They’ve been around for a long time.  Here are some examples:

So are the Brady’s wanting to be the deciders of what is and what isn’t part of the art of gunsmithing?  Do they want to dictate which decorations on guns are OK, and which aren’t?  I have no doubt they do, but decorating guns is a tradition as old as guns, and this is merely the latest incarnation.  I’d be more sympathetic to the arguments that if these dasterdly paints ever fell into criminal hands, all holy hell would break loose, if brightly colored spray paint weren’t available in every home depot.  Sure, it won’t look as nice as the custom paint Lauer makes, but if you’re a gang banger and want to paint your gun Barney Purple so the fuzz will hesistate to shoot you, well, the technology to do so has been readily available for years.  If painting guns suddenly becomes the fashion among criminals now, we’ll know who to blame, and it won’t be shooters, or Lauer Custom Weaponry.  Color me skeptical that will happen, though.

SayUncle points out that American Hunters and Shooters Assocation is shilling for Obama the Socialist Messiah.  AHSA has pretty thoroughly unmasked itself as an anti-gun false flag operation, especially with Bob Ricker occaisonally making appearances in the comments of gun blogs berating gun rights activists.  The Jolly Roger is flying high on AHSA mast, but that actually doesn’t matter too much, in their minds.  What Ricker and Schoenke are hoping for is that most hunters and shooters don’t know what a pirate ship looks like, and will hear their endorsement and think it means Obama is down with the hunters, and by association gun rights.  The problem is, people aren’t that stupid, and the word is getting out there.  It takes an extra special kind of prick to take people for such fools, but that’s exactly what the Schoenke and Ricker do.

Shout as loud as you can for more of the same.  That’s the Chicago Way!

Dave Hardy has been in this fight since I was crapping in diapers.  It’s always good to have the longer term perspective.

You can actually find out what states have the highest suicide rate per capita here.  By the looks of it, Montana, Nevada, Alaska, New Mexico, and Wyoming are pretty depressing places to live, since they are 1 through 5 respectively.  Rounding out the bottom?  New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maryland and Hawaii.

Is it really a surprise that the states VPC mentions have high rates of suicide using a gun, given they have high rates of sucides?  Also, how else are you going to kill yourself in Montana and Alaska?  There are few high bridges, few trains, no tall buildings.  I mean, I guess you could smother yourself in honey and go try to find a grizzly, but seriously, this is about as surprising as finding out that New York leads the nation in suicidal dives off tall buildings, or that San Francisco leads the nation in bridge suicides.

That’s not even getting into whether taking things away from people because they might kill themselves with it makes sense as a public public policy measure.  I don’t think it does.  I suspect most Americans would agree.

Both blogs have approved more comments.  They only seem to be approving comments that they feel like responding to, so pretty clearly they aren’t willing to engage in unmoderated, or even reasonably moderated debate on the subject.  One of my posts not approved questioned their statistics.  I’ll give them credit, their moderating policy is smarter (from their point of view) than the Brady’s.  Make it look like you have comments, and only let the people see the comments that make your argument look good.  Let’s take a look at some of their claims:

Phelps, that’s actually not true. If you look at CDC data for 2005 and analyze the states by gun death rate per capita, the states with the highest per capita gun death rates are (in order): Louisiana, Alaska, Montana, Tennessee, Alabama, Nevada, Arkansas, Arizona, Mississippi, West Virginia, and Wyoming. There’s not a state in that group with tough gun laws. Interestingly, the bottom six states with the lowest gun death rates per capita are: Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Hawaii (lowest). All states with tough, smart gun laws.

Except they are conflating gun deaths with gun violence again.  What they are referring to is a VPC study using CDC data.  The problem, again, is these statistics include suicide by gun, which is going to be higher in areas where guns are more common in homes.  Would CSGV feel better if people threw themselves in front of trains instead?  If you remove suicides, Alaska, Montana, West Virginia, and Wyoming all have homicide by gun rates lower than the national average, and in the case of Alaska, Montana and Wyoming, far lower than New Jersey or New York.  And keep in mind this is just gun homicide, not overall violence.

There’s an old saying, “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.”  There is a correlary here that should go “Beware of gun control groups bearing statistics.”

UPDATE: Sailorcurt shows some of the samples that haven’t been approved.  Pretty clearly they aren’t going to let through any argument they can’t refute.  At this point, I’ll go back to ignoring them, since pretty clearly before the pro-gun folks came along, they had no commenters.

For those of you who missed the interview Cam Edwards did of Russel Ford, the inventor of Ammunition Encoding, and president of Ammunition Coding Systems, you can watch here:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Pretty astounding.

CSGV’s blogs (both blogs) appear to be approving pro-gun comments.  I’ve added a comment of my own.  We’ll see if it appears.  They are also responding to the comments.  Judging from the comments I’m seeing approved so far, I’m going to guess it’s selective moderation.  Not fully open debate, but I won’t ding them if they approve substantive comments without a bias.  If they don’t approve something, post your content here, and we’ll let it be judged whether their moderation is meant to foster open debate, or help them make their points.